https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mis...s-area-n1264199

He texted a picture to his friend who looked at aerial photos to pinpoint a general area.

My first thought would be to check the EXIF data to see if he had the GPS on the phone set.

Wow! Good thinking and a stroke of good luck!

I'll bet the lost hiker did not have a topo map with him, or he would never have been confused.

That's how the owner of iknowwhereyourcatlives.com placed the cat pictures on the global map.

Missing gear: a decent map, a phone charging bank, adequate clothing for the cold, a way to make shelter and a hot drink ... the usual suspects.

Regardless, a win is a win. It's certainly an unusual approach. Glad he's okay.

This strikes me as another example of the smartphone and social media mindset: people reach out to their network instead of the authorities. It's their automatic response. There was a news story of a terrified young woman being stalked for 40 minutes on city streets. She posted the whole thing live to social media as she tried to shake him. If she had called 911 instead, the police would have ended the drama in a few minutes.

Yeah, potentially creepy stuff. We're probably at the point where an a Google AI can do that automatically.

A few more details. The picture he sent with his dying phone was the worst possible- just his dirty feet dangling over a ledge - at least show a sky line and give searchers a chance....

Apparently he entered an area closed to entry because of recent fires - facing possible substantial fines and court time....

Just plain clueless.

It´s creepy. It´s more machine learning than AI. When you have street view where the pic was taken, ML can locate it for you. When it´s trained well, the results will be fairly accurate.
OTOH the same technology brings suggestions like "You added a baseball bat to your shopping cart. Do you want to add a balaclava?".

Like most technology, there's good news and bad news....

These days, technology seems to give with one hand and take with the other.